college than those who are less aware of the significance of wellness. Furthermore, insurance costs borne by
the college are likely to be lower if employees undergo periodic medical check-ups and take part in such
health-promoting activities as relaxation training, aerobics, and the like.

Release-Time Programming

After the successful Fitness Fair, your president decides to endorse a release time policy as an inducement
for employees to join the wellness activities you will sponsor. Under this policy, the college releases
employees from work for up to an hour and a half each week to participate in authorized activities which fit
into six wellness dimensions which were fitst formulated at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point:
social, occupational, spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional.

Your committee compiles and distributes a list of authorized wellness activities which includes workshops
on stress management, parenting, assertiveness training, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, time management,
holistic lifestyling, smoking cessation, loneliness, nutrition, and other similar topics; participation in
swimming, aerobic dancing, jogging, canoeing, volleyball, biking, and other physical exercise; and brown
bag luncheon lectures and discussions on wellness-related topics led by respected community figures who
donate their time.

Almost all the authorized wellness activities your committee identifies are already funded, supplied with
adequate space and equipment, and well known throughout the college community. Associating these
activities with the Wellness Committee and providing release time to take part in them, therefore, lends an
air of importance and respectability to participants at the same time that it contributes to the credibility of the
committee itself.

Incentive Awards

Simultaneously with distributing lists of the authorized wellness activities, your committee also announces
incentive awards for those who respond to its programs. With half your budget, you purchase a variety of
ribbons, t-shirts, and small trophies with which to reward people for their participation in wellness events
throughout the year, based on a point scale you have devised and publicized. A small prize—a cash award,
plus dinner with the president of the college at a local restaurant, is offered for the best wellness logo design
for your t-shirts. Attractive certificates will also be given out at the end of every semester to participants
who complete four activities in any one of the five wellness dimensions, one activity from any four different
dimensions, or a semester-long, authorized wellness education program such as CPR.

Publicity

A third of your meager budget is set aside for publicizing events you plan to conduct throughout the
year. Sign-up sheets for many of the events will need to be distributed around campus, flyers and placards
should be posted strategically, notices of especially important workshops and discussions may have to be
printed in the college newspaper, and videotapes can be recorded of some of the sports mini-tournaments
held on campus so that participants will have an opportunity to watch their own performance. A college-
wide wellness party in September of the following year may also be publicized, at which the tournament
videotapes will be screened in order to generate renewed enthusiasm after the summer vacation.

Ensuring a Promising Future

_ Running a creditable wellness program with minimal funding is possible, but acquiring a better financial
base over the long run is both practically and symbolically necessary. Expanding your target audience and
the number of activities you offer will cost money. Eventually the responsibilities of your committee will
multiply to the point that a totally voluntary group can no longer handle them effectively, and the time will
come to lobby for a paid leadership position to coordinate the committee's broadened programs. A wellness
program which starts on a shoestring can become one of the central themes of life and work at your college,
something which heightens the morale and performance of everyone who partakes of its offerings.

Brook Zemel Phillip Venditti
Galveston College Austin Community College

For further information, contact the authors at Galveston College, 4015 Avenue Q, Galveston, TX 77550; or
Austin Community College, P.O. Box 2285, Austin TX 78768.

Seaton teed

 

 

 

 

Suanne BD. Roueche, Editor
August 21, 1987, Vol. IX, No. 16

INNOVATION ABSTRACTS Is a publication of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, EDB 348, The University of
Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, (512)471-7545. Subscriptions are available tc: nonconsortium members for $35 per year. Funding in
part by the WK. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation. Issued weekly when classes are in session during fall and spring
terms and once during the summer.

“ The University of Texas at Austin, 1986
Further duplication Is permitted only by MEMBER institutions for their own personnel. ISSN 0199-106X%